Burlington clears homeless encampment at center of ACLU lawsuit

A pair of boots lie next to an imprint of a tent at a homeless campsite on city-owned land off North Avenue that was evacuated by its residents before a crew from Burlington's Parks & Recreation and Publics Works departments arrived to clear it on Thursday, November 9, 2017. (Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)Buy Photo

Burlington workers cleared up the remnants of a homeless encampment off North Avenue on Thursday morning, nearly two weeks after a judge ruled the city could proceed with encampment evictions while an ACLU lawsuit challenging their constitutionality proceeds.

About 10 city workers showed up shortly after 8 a.m. to a mostly empty campsite. What remained were some bags of trash, a pair of boots, a broken dresser, a chaise lawn chair, scattered empty soda bottles and a few other items.

Twenty minutes later, the trash had been picked up and a few items were separated for safekeeping in storage. Dan Cahill, a city land steward, said they had saved the boots, the chair and some papers and a book they had found.

A Burlington police officer and Howard Center Street Outreach worker accompanied the cleanup crew, though they left before the work was complete.

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A crew from Burlington's Parks & Recreation and Publics Works departments clear a homeless campsite on city-owned land off North Avenue on Thursday, November 9, 2017. (Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)

On Wednesday afternoon, as the sun set over the bluffs that the city argued were being environmentally impacted by the camp's presence, the men who had lived there for months packed up their belongings and left.

Richard "Midnight" Pursell, one of the plaintiffs in the ACLU's case, said he and the other men had found another place to camp.

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Midnight, who is homeless, pauses while packing up his belongings from the campsite where he has been staying off North Avenue in Burlington on Wednesday, November 8, 2017. The Burlington Police Department has served notice that they plan to close down the campsite, which sits on city-owned land, on Thursday morning.(Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)

"It's frustrating," he said. He added that he wondered where the money that flows into the city to help the homeless ends up.

Pursell said he has been working on getting a new ID. Once he does, he said he is hopeful he can get a job. He had been sleeping in the wooded area behind the community gardens at 311 North Ave. since August, he said. Before that, he had been in Battery Park, and he said the camp felt safer to him than the park.

He said spots at the shelters have been limited, especially for men, and added that the nights have begun to get cold.

The city posted a second eviction notice after Judge Geoffrey Crawford lifted a temporary restraining order that had halted the original eviction.

The second notice is titled "notice to remove possessions." The first notice was titled "notice to vacate," and issues notice that all people on the property are considered to be trespassing.

The new notice instructs the men that they must have their belongings cleared from the site by Nov. 9. Unlike the notice posted in October, the new notice does not mention trespassing, but specifies where campers can go to retrieve belongings stored by the police.

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A notice is posted to a tree near a camp in the woods of North Ave. in Burlington where Brian Croteau, Larry Priest and Richard Pursell have been living. The notice warns that they must remove tents and their possessions by Nov. 9.(Photo: RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS)

City Attorney Eileen Blackwood said the change was made because questions had been raised about what happens to the property left at camp and the city wanted to directly address that issue.

In the lawsuit filed last month, the ACLU raised questions about whether the city's policy towards disposing items found at camps violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure.

Jared Carter, one of the lawyers representing the men, said the new wording represented a positive change.

"But it doesn't fix the underlying problem," he said. He pointed out that the men were still living outside and that they were some of the most vulnerable members of the community, who may lack some economic rights but still have constitutional rights.

The city said it decided to clear the camp because of concerns about environmental impacts to the site.

In 2016, the city and the Vermont Land Trust jointly purchased 12 acres of the former Burlington College property at 311 North Ave. to build a park, but Assistant City Attorney Gene Bergman said they believed the spot where the men were camping was purely city-owned.

According to a 2016 management plan written by Dan Cahill, the city's land steward who made the initial move to remove the camp, the area is managed as an "urban wild park."

The document also states that the city will eventually become the sole owner of the property, and that upgrades to a trail that leads down to the bike path and the Stone House, a building on the property that had previously been used as a dormitory for Burlington College, will begin this year.

The city received permission from the Vermont Land Trust to remove the encampment, Bergman said.

The Stone House is within sight of the former campsite. Earlier this year, the City Council approved a plan to temporarily house up to 13 homeless men in the building.

In a memo encouraging the plan written last February, former Parks director Jesse Bridges wrote that Chittenden County's shelters remain full and waiting lists for housing long.

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The building at 311 North Ave. seen on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. The building was formerly part of Burlington College. (Photo: RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS)

The plan never materialized and on Thursday, the house appeared vacant. Bridges said last week that the project was called off because of funding issues.

At least one of the proposed financial partners, the UVM Medical Center's Community Investment Fund, said they had expected to get a proposal from the city about the project, but never did.

Burlington's warming shelter opened on Nov. 1 and has been full, said Kim Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Community Health Center of Burlington, which operates the shelter.

Thursday night is the first statewide "adverse weather conditions" night of the winter, said MaryEllen Mendl of the United Ways of Vermont, which runs the referral program that connects homeless people with emergency motel housing.

Friday and Saturday are also statewide "adverse weather conditions" nights, Mendl said, when the rules for motel eligibility are relaxed because of dangerous temperatures. The temperature in Burlington is expected to dip into the teens over the next few nights, according to the National Weather Service.

Contact Jess Aloe at 802-660-1874 or jaloe@freepressmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @jess_aloe.